UPDATE: Following the announcement made by the Prime Minister at midday regarding the ban on gatherings of upwards of 100 people, all public screenings and meetings linked with the Cinéma du réel Festival are now cancelled. Badgeholders can, however, watch the competition films via the event's online videotheque at Festival Scope, Tënk, Mediapart and UniversCiné (read about the details here).

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Last night saw Babette Mangolte’s French-American co-production Calamity Jane & Delphine Seyrig, A Story open (as a prologue) the 42nd Cinéma du Réel Festival (scheduled to unspool in Paris’s Pompidou Centre from 13 to 22 March) against the rather peculiar backdrop of the Coronavirus epidemic and the progressive strengthening of precautionary measures adopted by the French government (namely the closure of schools and universities as of this Monday, even though gatherings of upwards of 1,000 people are still the only events to be cancelled for now). It would seem, therefore, as the festival’s director general Catherine Bizern emphasised last night at the event, that "Cinéma du réel is withstanding reality, but it’s withstanding through adaptation".

The French selection, meanwhile, will offer up 12 feature films: There Will Be No More Night[+lee también: críticatráilerficha del filme] by Éléonore Weber, Seekers by Aurore Vullierme, J.A by Gaëlle Boucand, Chronicle of the Stolen Land[+lee también: críticaficha del filme] by Marie Dault, My Dear Spies by Vladimir Léon, Golden Age by Jean-Baptiste Alazard, The Missing One by Rares Ienasoaie, The Man Leaning by Marie-Violaine Brincard and Olivier Dury, Ahlan Wa Sahlan by Lucas Vernier, Talking with the Dead by Taina Tervonen, Gevar's Land by Qutaiba Barhamji and the French-Swiss co-production A House byJudith Auffray.